He has been dubbed ‘Millionaire Miliband’ by Tory MPs, who accuse him of mounting attacks on David Cameron’s wealth from the comfort of his own £2 million London home.

Now new light has been shed on Ed Miliband’s finances after it emerged that his barrister wife Justine Thornton helped to fill the marital coffers with lucrative work representing both toxic waste exporters and travellers who set up an illegal camp.

In October last year – just two weeks after her husband mounted an attack on capitalist ‘predators’ in his party conference speech – Ms Thornton appeared in the Court of Appeal on behalf of four polluters accused of illegally shipping 158 tons of hazardous waste to Nigeria.

Controversial: Labour Party Leader Ed Miliband with wife Justine, who is k representing both toxic waste exporters and travellers who set up an illegal camp

Ms Thornton, whose legal work earns her an estimated £200,000 a year, was attempting to block criminal charges against her clients.

The case was the culmination of Operation Boron, the codename given to the Environment Agency’s unprecedented prosecution of 15 individuals and companies for shipping waste from the electronics industry to the African country.

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The agency said it had mounted the prosecution – the largest ever of its kind – because British law bans exporting such waste as it ‘risks harm to human health and the environment in the recipient country’ through unsafe disposal methods, such as burning plastic.

Nigeria has been described as ‘the world’s PC dumping ground’, with up to 50 million tons of old computers thrown away each year on waste dumps. Children earn about £1.30 a day scavenging on the dumps, putting their health at risk as old computers can contain toxins such as mercury, nickel, cadmium, chromium and lead.

And research from a Nigerian university has warned of a ‘chemical timebomb’ as toxins from dumps seep into the water table.

Ms Thornton’s defence case rested on claiming that British laws on waste export were incompatible with EU ones – but the subsequent trial found that the European laws had been breached.

In his 2011 conference speech, Mr Miliband pledged that Labour would use higher taxes to punish ‘predator’ companies with a ruthless attitude to capitalism.

Des res: The Miliband's £2m house

Ms Thornton has also acted for Felix Doran, an Irish traveller who illegally set up a caravan site on Green Belt land in Bedfordshire, when he used the Court of Appeal in a failed bid to block attempts to remove him.

Mr Miliband provoked fury in No 10 by citing David Cameron’s wealth in his attack on the Prime Minister for cutting the top rate of tax from 50p to 45p. ‘David Cameron isn’t just writing the cheques. He is receiving one,’ the Labour leader said. ‘He’s going to be getting the millionaires’ tax cut.’

Mr Miliband and his wife live with their two children in a four-bedroom house in an affluent North London area, which they bought for £1.6 million three years ago.

The house is registered in Ms Thornton’s name only. Mr Miliband is believed to contribute to the estimated £400,000 Barclays mortgage from his £130,000 party leader’s salary.

Dangerous: Refugee children collect scrap materials in a waste dump

Ms Thornton bought the property – which also has a large garden and a ‘granny flat’ in the basement – from the National Trust. The house had been left to the organisation by violin teacher Elspeth Iliff.

It is in a fashionable enclave which is also home to the Labour MP and former actress Glenda Jackson, former Labour leader Neil Kinnock and writer Julian Barnes. The house is also in the catchment area for Gospel Oak primary school, where chairman of the governors is Fiona Millar, partner of Tony Blair’s former media chief Alastair Campbell.

A Labour spokesman said: ‘Justine Thornton is a specialist environmental lawyer and like all lawyers she is professionally obliged to represent clients allocated to her whatever her views. It is the way the British legal system works.

‘To suggest there is anything wrong about her taking these cases is either malicious or reveals a profound lack of knowledge about the legal system.’